


origin stories

by misstaken



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe, Domestic Fluff, Family Drama, Fluff, M/M, Marriage, Sugar Daddy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2017-03-10
Packaged: 2018-10-02 05:57:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10211075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misstaken/pseuds/misstaken
Summary: Eventually, someone was going to sit Ardyn Izunia down on a couch and make him talk about his mother.Part of the Sugar Daddy Ardyn AU-Verse. Takes place after "no time like the present".





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this mostly for myself because I needed something stupidly fluffy with these guys. If your teeth rot and fall out I'm sorry. 
> 
> Yes, I'm sort of blending headcanons here, in case you're reading my half-Astral Ardyn delusions as well.

Noctis and Ardyn rode the elevator up to Ardyn’s condominium in silence, trudging down the hallway in tandem. Noctis pressed his thumb to the keypad; Ardyn had re-keyed all the locks to recognize his thumbprint two years ago after they had moved in together. The door opened with a soft click, and Ardyn followed Noctis inside. 

Ardyn took his shoes off and went straight for the bar in the kitchen, while Noctis hung his jacket up and sat down on the sofa with a defeated sigh. He closed his eyes and rested his head against the wall, listening to the sounds of his fiancé moving about in the kitchen. The cupboard opened, and two glasses were set on the table. He heard ice, the sound of liquid pouring from bottles, and the clink of ice cubes against glass as Ardyn mixed his own drink. Noctis could almost taste the scotch before Ardyn set it down in front of him.

“Thanks,” Noctis said with a nod, taking a sip from the glass, feeling the warmth of the liquor spread through his chest. He ran a hand over his beard before downing another drink. Ardyn sat down next to him, close enough that Noctis could feel his presence but not touching him in any way.

Both men silently sipped their drinks until they were half empty, and Ardyn glanced at Noctis. “You know,” Ardyn mused, “I’ve laid off entire offices without batting an eyelash. I’ve calmly signed mergers that I knew were going to put organizations out of business. Before I met you, I fucked men that desperately wanted me and then asked them to leave before they put their pants back on, and I can honestly say I never felt anything like I did when that woman questioned the integrity of our relationship.”

“So you’re saying that you’ve always been a charming philanthropist, it didn’t just start with me,” Noctis replied with a shake of his head. “I thought you were going to punch the officiant back there.” He looked down into his glass of scotch and thought back on the afternoon’s events. “They had a point,” he said. “I mean...I don’t think we’ve talked about my dad since that first time on the phone. And I guess I always figured you had parents somewhere...but since I didn’t want to talk about my dad, I assumed you just didn’t want to talk about your family either.” Noctis licked his lips, the taste of the scotch still strong, and glanced at the second hand ticking on his watch.

Ardyn set his glass down on the coffee table firmly. “That still doesn’t give her the right. Normally I couldn't care less about what people think of me, but there was something about her words today. I'm thinking of firing her and finding someone else. You and I know each other more intimately than anyone in the world, and yet a state-sanctioned third party could keep us from marriage?”

Earlier that afternoon, Noctis and Ardyn had met with the planner and their officiant for their upcoming wedding; all had been going well until the planner had stepped outside to make phone calls, and the officiant began asking exploratory questions about their relationship. She had indicated that she simply wanted to get to know them better as a couple before agreeing to perform their nuptials, and the answers they gave were simple enough at first: a sanitized account of how they met and became a couple, living arrangements, discussions of financial matters, to which Ardyn sarcastically asked if he would be required to disclose his tax returns, and finally of family. When neither man was able to answer basic questions about each other’s in-laws, and Noctis admitted that he hadn’t a clue whether or not Ardyn even had siblings, the officiant had raised her eyebrow suspiciously and commented that a new family was difficult to form when the two parties hadn’t even spoken of their own to each other. Ardyn had shed his normal, carefree demeanor at that point, abruptly heading out into the hallway, claiming the need to discuss the florist with the wedding planner.

“I’ve almost never seen you get upset like that. For real, I mean.” Noctis thought of Ardyn’s silent anger, hidden behind a smile but evident to the man who knew him best. It was different from the annoyance he showed when Noctis back-talked him, the boredom he displayed regarding minutiae, or the strict dominant personality that he sometimes took on in the bedroom, which was harsh but in the end only a facade. “I didn't realize you were this passionate about marrying me,” he said with a sideways smile.

“The last time I was that aggravated was when you sold the Rolex, and at that point the idea of you becoming my husband was beyond the farthest reaches of my imagination,” Ardyn replied, stirring his drink and taking a sip. Noctis watched his throat move as he swallowed, and focused again on the second hand of his watch. “It’s very difficult to personally offend me, Noct. You know that. But I've invested a lot in you and in this marriage, and I'll be damned if it goes to hell because an outsider thinks we don't communicate well enough.”

Noctis folded his left leg under his right. “Look…” he sighed, setting his glass on the table and squeezing Ardyn’s thigh. “I...I hate talking about my folks. But I figure we can’t avoid this forever. So…” he smiled weakly, “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

“Innuendo,” Ardyn smiled over the top of his highball glass, the lines in his forehead relaxing slightly, “You’re picking up some of my bad habits in your old age, you know. I’m flattered.” 

“Yeah, well, I guess you take the bad habits with the good,” Noctis replied. He moved his hand from Ardyn’s thigh to his shoulder and leaned in, meeting his lover’s lips for a kiss. Ardyn tasted of gin and tonic, and his fingertips played across Noctis’s jawline, fingertips idly brushing along his soft beard. Ardyn knew how much this turned Noctis on, and Noctis moved his hand away before the sensation could distract him from the task at hand. “You want me to go first?”

“I’d rather kiss you, to be perfectly honest,” Ardyn whined slightly, and Noctis wondered how a forty-five year old man was still such a baby from time to time. “All right. I suppose some of this would have come up eventually during the prenuptial agreement.”

“That again,” Noctis groaned. He had been as upset by that proposition as Ardyn had been today with the officiant. Noctis associated having a prenup with money-seeking women marrying old men on their deathbeds, but after talking it over with Ignis, realized that he had never considered the legal complexities of marrying a man who had more money than than all the other people he knew combined. Ignis himself was well-off, but Ardyn clearly trumped him in personal wealth and influence. The first meeting with the attorneys had been so awkward that he wasn’t sure he could think about it again so soon, especially after today’s events. “Can we take this whole wedding thing one fucked up conversation at a time?”

Ardyn rolled up the sleeves of his sweater and ran a hand through his auburn hair. “If you insist,” he relented, taking a deep breath. “I'll start, then. My mother and father met by chance during a medical conference in Switzerland. She was a physician and he was from old money, working an investor in a variety of pharmaceutical development firms. My father was rich and charming, she was beautiful and kind, and as she described it, he was taken by her at first sight but it took her some time to warm up to him,” he said, his impassive face cracking into a small grin as he regarded Noctis. “I suppose the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

Noctis finished the last of the scotch in his glass and smirked. “Funny how that goes,” he said. “Did she stay there…?”

“She came back to the United States with him for a while,” Ardyn continued, “but without an American medical license she couldn’t practice. She wasn't happy with being a kept woman, especially being a professional woman in Europe,” he added, “and if she hadn’t become pregnant, I don’t know that she would have stayed here at all. You would think a doctor would have been more careful with her birth control, but such is life.” He shrugged, and Noctis couldn’t escape the irony of Ardyn’s mother’s situation as compared to his own with his lover. He felt as if he had the very same conversation about being a kept man with Ardyn more than once before enrolling in graduate school. “I was born, and the Izunia family was less than thrilled by my father’s first son being a bastard child of an immigrant woman. Did I mention they were also religious conservatives?”

Noctis shook his head, and felt a pang of empathy for his fiancé. “So...a shotgun wedding, then?”

“Hardly. As devout as they claimed to be, divorce would have been expensive and unpleasant, I’m sure. By her account, she loved my father and me, but he was married to his work and she wanted to practice medicine again. So she returned to Zurich when I was five years old. Perhaps today they could have made the distance work, but at the time, it wasn’t meant to be,” Ardyn’s gaze was far away, past the place on the wall that his eyes were trained on, looking for something that Noctis knew wasn’t there.

“Did go back with her to Switzerland? I thought you grew up here,” Noctis had an image of young Ardyn frolicking in the hills that looked like something out of The Sound of Music, and shook his head, trying to hide his amusement. 

“My father’s family was wealthy, as I said, so she made the decision to leave me with him in hopes of a better life for me. He switched his investment focus to energy, eventually married another woman who was happy to stay at home with her children, and I grew up with her and my half-brother outside of Dallas,” Ardyn pursed his lips as he finished the sentence. 

Noctis drew in a breath. “I didn’t realize you had a brother,” he said. “You...I thought you’d have mentioned him. And you don’t sound like you’re from Texas,” he added as an afterthought.

“I don’t waste my time with people who don’t add value to my life, Noct,” Ardyn explained tacitly, standing up from the sofa and crossing the room with his glass to refill it. Noctis watched him as he mixed another gin and tonic, his normal poker face intact but the tension in his posture betraying his calm exterior. “You don’t sound like a Long Islander, to be fair.”

Stretching his legs out across the sofa, Noctis considered having another drink himself, but his stomach reminded him that he hadn’t eaten since lunch. “I always wanted a brother,” Noctis said, his tone wistful.

“You don’t want a brother like mine,” Ardyn returned to the sofa, lifting Noctis’s legs up from his spot and sitting back down on the couch, letting Noctis stretch his calves over Ardyn’s thighs. The older man drained half his drink and balanced the glass on Noctis’s shins, glancing down at his fiancé’s prone form. “I don’t suppose I could convince you to table this sentimental bullshit in favor of a blowjob, could I? I’ll even take care of you first.”

Noctis scratched his beard, mimicking Ardyn’s signature thoughtful gesture. As good as a blowjob from Ardyn sounded, he wasn’t going to let his fiancé leave this story unfinished. “Maybe later,” he said, “I want to hear your story, Ardyn. Please. It’s part of you...and I love you.” He had told Ardyn that he loved him many times now, but it still excited Noctis to hear those three words and to see the slight softening of his lover’s face whenever he heard Noctis say them.

Ardyn shook his head, the corners of his mouth turning up in a small smile. “God, why are you so damn irresistible? I swear, Noct.” He picked up his glass from Noctis’s shins, turning underneath his legs and leaning over to kiss him. Noctis kissed Ardyn back, scotch blending with gin and tonic as their tongues met briefly between each other’s lips. Ardyn’s hands cupped his face, his thumbs stroking over the whiskers on his cheeks, and he pulled away with a full smile on his face. “That was a pleasant interlude,” he commented teasingly, “pity I can’t convince you to forget the past and focus on the present.”

“So, your brother,” Noctis said, eyeing his empty glass and taking a deep breath, diverting his thoughts from Ardyn’s soft lips and his stirring arousal. “What happened? I take it we won’t be sending him a wedding invitation.”

“My father was a workaholic and a heavy drinker and smoker, so it was only a matter of time before his lifestyle caught up to him. Prayer can only save you for so long, evidently. He died of a heart attack while I was in medical school,” Ardyn said, and at once Noctis realized why Ardyn had once aspired to be a doctor: to follow in his mother’s footsteps. He had a growing list of questions for his fiancé, and wondered why it had taken them so long to discuss these parts of their past. “My stepmother was so dependent on him that she was basically helpless once he was gone. My father controlled all of our assets; she couldn’t balance a checkbook without moral support. The management of his estate was left to me and my half-brother. He had invested wisely throughout his twenties and thirties, and while we knew we were wealthy no one had discussed with us the extent of his fortune.” His expression darkened. “My brother was a college undergraduate at the time, with his sights set on law school. He was young but cunning and well-connected. I was more altruistic and trusting at the time, and I didn’t realize what he was doing until he had convinced my weak-willed stepmother to sign over power of attorney to him.” 

Noctis swallowed. “Why would he…?”

Ardyn sighed. “Influence and money: two of the greatest motivators in the world. It also didn’t help that my God-fearing family never approved of my lifestyle.”

“You were going to be a doctor, though,” Noctis said, reaching out for Ardyn’s hand, clenched in a fist on his thigh. He coaxed Ardyn’s fingers open and laced his own fingers through them. “What’s wrong with…?” He looked into Ardyn’s golden brown eyes and put the pieces together. “You told them you were gay,” he stated bluntly.

“I envy you sometimes, Noct. A lot’s changed between your generation and mine. I remember when two men kissed on TV and half the country refused to air the episode,” he said while his soft hand grasped Noctis’s tightly. “I couldn’t even consider coming out in high school like you did. I used to envision my high school girlfriend’s older brother while I kissed her,” Ardyn smiled wryly. “After my father’s death, I suppose I was careless in my grief; I brought a man home with me when I thought my brother and stepmother were out of town. My brother caught us together, and after that I was sinful, polluted, evil...you know, things that are reserved for picketers’ signs that most rational people roll their eyes at. It helped him erase any doubt in my stepmother’s mind that he should be the one to manage the Izunia family fortune.”

Noctis’s lips were pressed together in a thin line and his stomach turned. “What the fuck,” he finally said, shaking his head in disbelief.

“The past is the past,” Ardyn shrugged lightly, “and once I figured out what my brother was doing, I made sure that my own trust fund and the investments I had made were well-protected. My father had left me a good amount of money for medical school, and after I dropped out I used the remainder of that along with some strategic connections to establish myself as I am now.” He grinned devilishly. “There’s also nothing that soothes the soul quite like buying out a few of your jealous brother’s subsidiaries.”

“Where are they now?” Noctis’s eyes met Ardyn’s, and as nonchalant as his lover appeared, there was a hint of sadness in his gaze.

“None of my concern,” Ardyn waved a hand dismissively. “As I said, Noct, I don’t trifle with non-value added investments, financial or otherwise. You don’t become a one-percenter with a hot younger fiancé by wasting your time with annoyances.” He bent over Noctis and took his drink from the table, finishing the liquor in the glass and rolling an ice cube over in his mouth. “Are you satisfied now?” 

“Your mom,” Noctis said, not ready to give up while he still had the opportunity to ask more questions. “Do you ever talk to her?”

“My mother passed away as well a few years ago, shortly before you and I met. The breaks of getting older,” Ardyn answered. “Before that, I would see her whenever I had a moment to spare in Europe. She left her house outside of Zurich to me when she died,” he added with a playful grin, “perhaps we should consider honeymooning in the Swiss Alps. I remember how much you liked our ski trip in Vermont.”

“Yeah...that was less of the skiing and more of the...other stuff…” Noctis said, his cheeks flushed underneath his beard.

“Sounds like a perfect honeymoon to me, then.” Ardyn grinned.

Noctis filed thoughts of falling snow, hot tubs, and snuggling under down comforters away for the moment and trained his eyes on his fiancé. “Anyway, thank you. Thanks for telling me all this. I’m sorry stuff was so hard for you back then.” He used Ardyn’s arm for support and pulled himself up to a seated position, kissing his lips softly. “I told you I’d tell you about my father...if you still wanted to know.”

Ardyn shifted his body back on the sofa, laying against the throw pillows and pulling Noctis into his lap. He reclined between Ardyn’s legs, laying his head against the older man’s chest. As he began to speak, he stared out at the sun setting over Manhattan through the wall of windows opposite the living room. “I’ve been curious for six years,” Ardyn said, “and if we’re going to appease the person who’s responsible for marrying us, I suppose it’s the right thing to do, as you said?”

“I told you I was fine with getting married at City Hall,” Noctis pointed out, “and we can donate all this money we’re spending on the wedding to nonprofits that really need it.”

“I’m forty-five years old, Noct. Part of the reason I lost interest in marriage when I was young was because I never thought it would be an option. Now that I can marry you, you’d better believe that I’m going to marry you in the most ridiculously lavish way I can imagine.”

Noctis wondered if Ardyn could see him smile from his current vantage point. “Whatever, I’m done arguing with you about it,” he said. “I’m still gonna tell people to donate to the ASPCA instead of giving us presents.”

“As your heart desires,” Ardyn murmured, “I certainly have no use for a set of china or candlesticks.”

“So, my folks.” Noctis decided he might as well get this over with. Ardyn draped his arm over Noctis’s chest, his hand closing over Noctis’s upper arm. “I told you we lived on Long Island,” he started, “I was an only child. Stuff was pretty normal, I guess. Dad worked a lot but he was around when I needed him. Then when I was fifteen, Mom got sick. Cancer. It was...really aggressive.” A lump formed in his throat as he thought of memories that he’d repressed for years. “She died about six months later. Dad was a mortgage broker, and...well, you of all people know how that went a few years ago, even though you were on the other side of it.” He had never mentioned this to Ardyn, firmly cemented in the belief that Wall Street and hedge fund investors like Ardyn were the cause of his family’s financial demise. During the first six months of their relationship, Noctis periodically found himself at odds with the idea that he was selling his body to a man to get out of debt that was indirectly that man’s fault, and had considered ending their relationship more than once when his morals started to outweigh his desires for Ardyn’s body and to nullify his debt.

“Unfortunate,” Ardyn nodded against the crown of Noctis’s head, “but it was fortunate, then, that the fates led us to make each other’s acquaintance.”

He rolled his eyes, wondering how Ardyn still managed to be such a narcissist even as Noctis was laying his soul bare. “Anyway, I think he didn’t want to deal with it. Mom, the market, me...he just walked away from it all. He asked my aunt and uncle to look after me, and I haven’t really heard from him since I was in high school - I was basically on my own after I moved upstate. They sometimes talked about business deals he was involved with, and I know he sent money to help them take care of me until I left for Syracuse,” Noctis swallowed, “but that was it.”

“I see,” Ardyn said simply, kissing Noctis’s smooth black hair. “Have you ever reached out to him?”

“Why would I? If he wanted to talk to me, he would have put the effort in. He only thought of himself, not his son,” Noctis’s chest was tight underneath Ardyn’s heavy arm. “Dad didn’t want to be a part of my life then, I can’t imagine he would now. Especially when I’m marrying a guy fifteen years my senior.”

“I take it he didn't know you were into older men?” Ardyn shifted beneath Noctis, his other arm crossing over Noctis’s slim body.

“Like I said, he was pretty distant. We didn't talk about personal stuff much. I dunno, I sometimes wish Mom was still around,” he said slightly wistfully. “I’d like her to know I'm happy now.”

“I understand. I think my mother would have liked you,” Ardyn said, his tone similar to Noctis’s. “My real mother, that is. She always asked me if I'd met a nice man yet to settle down with, and I always reminded her that I wasn't the type to settle down.” Noctis closed his eyes, feeling Ardyn’s chest rise and fall beneath his shoulders. “Well, value-added people and all that. I’m certainly not going to encourage you to contact him. I’m a lot of things, Noct, but a hypocrite isn’t one of them.”

“Good, because I’d be pretty damn pissed at you if you tried,” Noctis said in an even tone, similar to Ardyn’s. He thought of Ardyn's mother and wondered if he had photos of her anywhere; his lover wasn't sentimental, but Noctis was insanely interested in seeing where Ardyn got his looks. He wondered in that moment what his father looked like now, and if they resembled each other in their older years. A tiny part of him that he had ignored for decades considered how his father would react to finding out what had become of his son over the past fifteen years.

“Well, now that’s out of the way…” Ardyn said, his breath still slow and even as his hands wandered down to the hem of Noctis’s shirt and followed the line of hair on his belly up to his navel, his hands skimming along the sensitive flesh at his hips. 

“For fuck’s sake, this has gotta be the most emotional moment we've had in months, and you're using it to get in my pants,” Noctis said flatly. “I take it back. My mom would have thought you're a sex-addicted douchebag and she wouldn’t be wrong”

“Guilty as charged. But you know I’d be a gentleman. I’ve got more social graces than to tell your mother about how reverently you worship my cock,” he said teasingly.

With an exasperated sigh, Noctis moved Ardyn’s roaming hands away from his waist. “Can we not talk about my late mother and cock worship in the same sentence, please?” He turned on his side and lay his head on Ardyn’s shoulder in order to see his face. “Did you ever want kids?”

“Never.” Ardyn had never answered a question Noctis had asked so quickly, and he silently relished the look of shock on the older man’s face. “Noct, you can’t be serious?”

“No, honestly I don’t either. But I figured she’d ask us if we talked about it, so now we have. Although…” Noct scratched his beard. “Prompto’s already asked me if I’ll babysit the kids when they have them.”

“Sounds as fun as dental work. They can leave them with a nanny, preferably at someone else’s house,” Ardyn shook his head and raised his eyebrow. “About the prenuptial agreement,” he changed the subject, and Noctis narrowed his eyes. “Noct, look. You now know what I’ve experienced with my family. I can’t take chances. It’s a precaution, and if you read through it, it protects you as much as it does me. It has nothing to do with how much I love you.”

Noctis wished Ardyn would say that he loved him out loud more often so he could start becoming desensitized to it. “I’ll read it over tomorrow. Let’s do something totally unrelated to the wedding for the rest of the night. I don’t know how brides think about this crap twenty-four-seven for months on end. I’m ready to just be married to you at this point, and we've barely been engaged for two months.”

He half-expected Ardyn to pin him to the couch and undress him, but Ardyn nodded thoughtfully and sat up. “Forza Horizon 7?” he said, reaching for the controllers that sat on the shelf beneath the coffee table. 

“Have I told you today that I love you?” Noctis grinned at his fiancé, booting up the console as Ardyn turned on the television. 

Later that night, Noctis rolled over in bed, listening to Ardyn’s breath while he slept next to him. He reached for his phone and opened up his email, staring at the blank screen for several moments. Ardyn stirred next to him, and he shoved his phone underneath the blankets, swallowing hard and pressing his face into the soft cotton pillowcase. Noctis knew he would never be able to sleep while he was this anxious, and he picked up his phone again and typed out a hasty email, his finger hovering over the send button for another long moment before tapping the screen and waiting for the bright screen to go black. He set his phone back on the nightstand and curled up against Ardyn, pressing a kiss between his shoulderblades before closing his eyes again.

SEVERAL MONTHS LATER

“Noct, buddy, come on,” Prompto said, tugging on Noctis’s sleeve. “They want us to go line up. The processional’s gonna start soon.” 

Noctis glanced up from his phone at his best man, who seemed almost as anxious as he had on his own wedding day. “Yeah,” he nodded, “give me a minute, okay? They’ll wait. Can’t start the wedding without both grooms.”

Prompto sighed exasperatedly. “Fine, but I swear, I think Ardyn and his best man are gonna kill me if I let you stall again. Those guys still kinda freak me out.”

“They’re not bad once you get to know them,” Noctis said over his shoulder, and he watched Prompto make a beeline back to the wedding coordinator. He took a deep breath and twisted the watch on his left wrist before unlocking his phone again and staring down at the email on the screen.

\---

Date: Saturday, October 25 16:45  
To: Noctis Lucis Caelum [apocalypsisnoctis@gmail.com]  
From: Regis Lucis Caelum [rlcaelum@crownsguardtitle.com]  
Subject: RE: hi

It’s been a long time, Noct. I’m glad to hear that you are doing well. Degrees from Syracuse and NYU are both admirable achievements. While I admit that I was surprised to receive an email from you after so long, I am happy that you reached out to me. This is many days late and many dollars short, but you should know that I never stopped thinking of you or your mother. All I wished for both of you was peace and happiness, and it sounds like you have found both.

I spoke to your aunt and uncle and they let me know that today is your wedding day. I was going to ask them to send me a photo of you and your husband together; I am in no position to make requests of the son I left behind, but it would mean much more if it came from you. I would like to see the man that you have become and the man you’ve chosen to spend the rest of your life with.

Please accept this as both my apology for the past and my best wishes for the future. Speaking of the future, perhaps we can keep in touch more regularly as well.

Congratulations to you both and always walk tall, my son. 

Dad

\---

Noctis's breath caught in his throat and he clutched his phone in his shaking hand. For days after sending that email, he had catalogued his emotions in anticipation of a response. After three weeks Noctis had decided that response was never coming, and pushed all thoughts of his father back to the dusty corners of his mind. His eyes were fixed on the cracks and swirls in the marble floor, and he wished he had waited until after the ceremony to check his email.

“Noct,” Ardyn said, and Noctis glanced up to see his fiancé standing behind him, a puzzled look on his face. “You’re not getting cold feet now, are you?”

He shook his head, his already-pounding heart beating slightly faster at the sight of Ardyn in his bespoke tuxedo and the sound of the processional music they had chosen beginning to play. “No...it’s...my dad. He sent me an email,” Noctis said, glancing up into Ardyn’s golden brown eyes.

“I see,” Ardyn said, taking Noctis’s hand in his own. “That bad?”

“Not at all. He...wants a picture of us. To see the man that’s made me so happy,” he explained, and Ardyn smiled.

“Well, come on, then. Appease your father and let’s go get married. The sooner we’re married, the sooner the honeymoon begins, and I for one can’t wait to be in the Alps with you,” Ardyn's voice was low as he bent down to get in the picture, taking the opportunity to kiss Noctis on the side of his mouth while he adjusted the camera on his phone.

“You're not supposed to kiss me until after they say we're married,” Noctis playfully admonished, and Ardyn grinned brilliantly into the camera, pushing a strand of hair away from his eyes just before Noctis took their picture. As he typed a quick reply, attaching the photo to the email, Ardyn squeezed Noctis’s shoulder.

“I'll kiss you when I want to. I've been kissing you at my leisure for nearly seven years and I don't plan on changing that for the sake of a title.” 

Noctis smiled broadly, sliding his phone into his tuxedo jacket pocket and his hand into Ardyn's, pulling his shoulders back and holding his head high as they walked towards the double doors of the ballroom and into the next chapter of their lives together.

**Author's Note:**

> The engagement watches are Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Chronographs with white gold bodies and blue faces. Ardyn likes them because they remind him of Noctis's eyes.
> 
> When Ardyn makes a reference to two men kissing on TV, he's referring to the episode of Melrose Place when Matt kissed his boyfriend and a bunch of stations refused to show it. Yeah, I'm dating myself, aren't I?
> 
> Thanks for reading this sugary nonsense and indulging me in this AU for so long!


End file.
